Wanting the cups back into shape again | and the salmon-coloured walls with their screens | of sleep and unloving | projected | Our shadows, though | aren’t quite right | some novelty has | crept into them | What is different | about our caresses? | How did that hint of a | river slip into them? | What has changed? | Why do they feel | less intense/more | intense, less | natural, more | desperate?, less | passionate, less | rehearsed? | More | strange? || Focus | once again | has slipped, there is this | shimmer under | the images, an | uncertainty to do with | moments || How did we | reach this point, our bed a | memory of hands reaching up to | feed voracious gulls? || When did this | process begin? || And where are you going | with those trees and their | footsteps of roots and earth so steady, like the tread | of armies or of blinded hearts?

Coda || The calmer times | How the wake settles | after our rowing boat has | surged on a few more | cycles of dipping oars and floating | oars with their | images shattered and | collapsed and | forgotten || Put the walls up again | sip tea | out in the courtyard garden | Hang the south in its | usual place | needing the sky | to behave like a sky, to be called | a sky, to | make its standard | connection with the tops of the | pear trees and the memory | of the sycamore the storm | broke some | years before || ‘H’ after ‘G’, asking | the hours to honour | their order, even to the point of | moving too fast, now, taking too much | now | Wanting the eyes in my heart to stay | open | the paths to lead | back home, to the office, the deli, the theatre… || Or do I? || How does it work out | in the end? | you say | your voice | dropping crumbs of | toast and honey | the edge of your mouth | tingled with silver || How still the weather | seemed that day I | can’t | remember || Building the wreck may | take a lifetime || Call this poem, “rain check”?